Sorry for my rough translation, enjoy!!
The World of Figure Skating Part 2: Nikkei Shinbun 09/22/2010
Link to the article. Looking good or bad? Polish flow and expressiveness. I'm practicing with good feeling now. I can concentrate naturally when my spirit is uplifted. How do I uplift it? I don't know. It just rises naturally. But I came to know my own pace recently, like when/how I get tired. When I get tired, I feel irritated and am in bad mood.
This is what I couldn't say before, it was disastrous until last December. I took my frustration out on both people and things. I'm ashamed to say, I was about to break my mobile one time.
It seemed I was nervous especially during the season, though I thought I was relaxed. I was sensitive to even small everyday things.
It's been three years since I started working with the team. It's important that we, the whole team have "a-un no kokyu 阿吽の呼吸" like when I say this then it will turn out to be that. The things that happened last year won't happen again this year, I think.
I didn't skate much from April to July in order not to obstruct the choreography and the shows. When I didn't skate for two days, I felt a little different/uncomfortable but it was no problem.
But it doesn't work as competitions come closer. I skate for three hours a day at least since August. Actually I want to skate for four hours or more but it's difficult due to the problem of ice rinks in Japan. I think it would be OK as long as the content of practice is intense.
In August, I don't care about how many times I fall on jumps or during steps. To run through the programs is mportant. As I could use the ice rink exclusively for many hours in Hokkaido camp in August, I skated a lot. I'm practicing the techniques like jump and spin but it's more important for me to absorb the programs until my body starts moving on its own. As for jumps, I forcus on it from September.
Basically I think it's better to run through both SP and FP once a day.
By the way, to do run-through every day is the way of practice in the U.S and to do it about twice a week is Russian way. In both case, we do part-pracice in the rest of the time. A program is divined into a few parts and we repeat one of them again and again and pursue every detail. I learned this way of practice from Nikolai Morozov. Pursuing the details is very interesting but it's difficult to do in Japan.
I'm gifted because I can use Kansai Univ's ice rink preferentially. But many skaters (in Japan) can't use ice rinks so freely. It's lucky if they can do run-through with music once or twice a day.
Simply speaking, what I think of men's figure skating is "looking good? or bad?" The posture is important but what is more important is if a skater can grab people's heart by his performance. There are spins and jumps as elements but there is a limit to go ahead of his rivals only by elements. I think overall flow and connection is important.
All those things like body line, beautiful position and posture with a carefully positioned toe, are required in order to connect the whole. I make them my own by practicing repeatedly. When the music changes, the points I have to pay attention to also change. So I ask "Look stange?" to Utako Nagamitsu coach every year when I start to skate a new program.
If she says "strange" then "How about this?". I rarely look at a mirror. Fisrt I move imaging the movement and adjust it hearing the coach's opinion. It would be useful to learn ballet or dance for figure skating but I have little experience to learn them.
But it would likely end up with just "yah, it's a lovely movement". You can't capture the audience enough. What is needed in addition to it, is expressiveness. It depends on one's feeling. Probably it's important to abandon one's shyness.
We Japanese tend to be humble because we care so much about how you are looked at by people when you stand out by doing something flashy. But in the world you have to stand out over other people otherwise you can survive.
I've succeeded in abandoning my shyness in the relatively earlier stage of my career, but still there are times when I'm distracted by eyes around me and can't get into good mood. During the choreography of this season's SP manbo, the choreographer and I used the ice exclusively so I could concentrate on it.
However I said expressiveness is important, I've never been drown in myself, though I do let myself into my performance. I can't convey anything if I'm just narcissistic. So I never think if I look beautiful during my performance.
I always perform thinkig these things like "How much am I delivering the image of the music?" "Is this face expression suitable for this expression?" "The audience are reacting this way, so I'm going to respond this way." This is not what you learn with your brain, it depends on whether you want to do so or not.
I chose more adult musics for this year. I'd like to express it with my performance. It's just my thought, I don't want to force it on people watching my performance. But, well, I'd be glad if you see it.
When I was a child, skating was just fun. I went to an ice rink at 10:30am and skated until 7:45pm on weekends and holidays. I played outside there, too, though. Then I once came back home for dinner and went again to a rink which opened late at night to skate. It was really good for me that I skated just for fun regardless of datails. Well, I had to work hard afterward because I hadn't learned the basics of skating.
Various people taught me various things after I took lessons seriously.
I try to do everything I learn. Because I don't know which way fits me well and also my body is changing day by day.
But the important thing is to choose only what fits me from all the things I learn. I think it's the key of growth. It seems I have been a type of a person who can find which is good or bad for oneself immediately since early times.
You can try to do everything what you are taught but there are a people who can't digest all of them. So it is necessary to abandon the things that don't fit you. And you have to make the choice by yourself.
Nowadays children don't spend much time on the ice, not like they used to do. Probably the circumstance of ice rinks in Japan is the cause of it. In my childhood, I could skate as much as I wanted, as figure skating wasn't that popular. Now the population of figure skating is increasing, but disappointingly I've never heard the number of ice rinks increased.
We can't skate freely. I sincerely hope more ice rinks will be built in Japan.
Dai-chan is going to explain about figure skating once a month. 
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You my hero 
